[Slugnet] FSF: 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G

[Anand Vaidya]

On Monday 14 July 2008 22:18:27 Harish Mallipeddi wrote:
> Part of the problem with Opensource software vs. Apple software is that the
> Opensource community doesn't have the right people. Apple has UI
> Interaction engineers, designers, etc because they hired them to do that
> job
> specifically and this really shows in their UI. Most KDE apps look like the
> UI was "designed" (more like "assembled" rather than "designed") by the
> developer strictly as a one-to-one mapping between the underlying feature
> and one UI widget. That sucks! The Opensource community predominantly has
> hard-core programmers who don't care a lot about these "soft" elements
> which is what is required to create great consumer facing apps.
>
> I was a long-time Linux user - used Linux pretty much throughout my time at
> NUS. I switched to a Mac about an year back. Bought an iPhone (1st gen)
> when it came out. Frankly I would have done this much earlier but I didn't
> have money to do so as a student :)
>
> Linux on a desktop is not that far-fetched. But one thing seriously led me
> to switch to a Mac - configuring dual-screens and getting that setup to
> work without restarting KDE/GNOME in Linux is a hassle. Cummulatively, I
> think I've wasted 2 weeks of my life doing just that. The same thing is
> true with Linux on a phone. I had the Qtopia GreenPhone with me for a
> while. The phone had the most hideous UI ever. Compiling custom kernels was
> cool and all, but it wasn't useable as a regular phone!
>
> Linux and Opensource software will never get to the Apple standards unless
> designers, interaction engineers join us. Maybe companies like Redhat or
> SuSE can help out here by hiring them initially. But they probably won't
> because they care more about their server market because that's where their
> money is.
>
> So until then, I would give up my principles and whore myself to Apple.
> Thank you.

I would like to share my experience with Mac vs Linux. I bought a MacBook, ran 
OSX for a while , but mostly linux (dual boot).

After experiencing OSX , I took the first opportunity to jump out of the Mac 
bandwagon to  a HP laptop recently after  less than stellar experience with 
Mac and OSX. Here are my complaints:

- Single mouse button

- The ever shifting Menu bar

- The laptop was definitely sluggish with OSX (2.2GHz, 2GB, 250GB !) and linux 
ran pretty fast on the same machine..

- The 5418 atheros driver for Linux was a problem for a long time (only 
recently the svn version works fine)

- Only 2 USB ports and they are so damn close that both can't be used 
simultaneously with many non-apple USB devices.

- Complete lack of any (native) support for open formats (ogg, odf etc)

- No clean way to get apps (eg: apache, ldap, gnu toolchains, latest JDK etc), 
I know fink etc. They have their own problems....(such as missing package 
that I need, old versions etc etc)

- Nonavailability of free VMware Server (fusion was still in beta then). 
Parallels was not suitable for what I do/did then. (iSCSI disks etc)

- You mean you have pay for updates?? Even MS gives updates free...

- The proprietary VGA dongle.

- No clean way to encrypt entire harddisk or atleast partitions ( I always 
protect my /home with DM-Crypt , so losing the laptop means only loss of $$ 
but not critcial data.) . On Linux it is trivial to get this setup going.

- Each and every "made for/by apple" addon has a hefty premium added to it. 

But the major complaint I had , apart from the "lack of freedom to do whatever 
we wish with our hardware and sofware" was  this: 

When OSX is set to mirrored VGA config, an external projector would completely 
messup the display on the Mac screen. This experience is in various 
departments in NUS, I guess some of the projectors are old. but.... I expect 
OSX to "just work" and it didn't. My current laptop with kubuntu works fine 
with the same projectors. (And I can tweak xrandr to get exactly the res I 
want...)

Maybe OSX works for some. But not for me. So, I will stay away from iPhone 
too, wait for a sufficiently Open phone (android? openmoko?)

PS: I was pleasantly surprised by the HP dv6773.  When I installed Hardy 
Heron, everything just   works: including webcam, video, wireless, ACPI 
sleep/suspend, CPU throttling, audio all I/O ports etc etc... and I saved 
about $1600 by not buying a MBPro configured similarly (2.4GHz, 4GB, 250GB)

 Regards
Anand








>
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 9:54 PM, Ray Rashif <schivmeister at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's just one big sin. You know for a fact that it's bad, but it's also
> > good..for your pleasure. You know you're being the loser, but it never
> > bothers you because you don't mind being the loser as long as the
> > pleasure is there.
> >
> > I think I just summarised an Apple user.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Slugnet mailing list
> > Slugnet at lugs.org.sg
> > http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq
> > http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet